Kinglets Afire

Golden-crowned Kinglets are the quintessential birder’s bird: common enough and flashy to boot, but non-birders just don’t see them, ever. Point one out to a non-birder someday, and you’ll reap a look of dazed nonbelief. “Huh, I’ve never seen that here before!”

They appear to be moving through the Atlanta area in good numbers right now, the urban forest filled with their high-pitched tsipp-tsipp-tsipp’ing. This morning in Herbert Taylor Park I found myself surrounded by a flock of 10 or more, all of them oblivious, in that captivating kinglet way, to us great lumbering mammals on the trails. At one point two birds flew down to eye level just a few feet from me, and somehow found themselves on the same twig, probably after the same invisible spiderling or eggcase. As soon as they saw each other, up went their crown feathers, revealing the red center that only male golden-crowns have; one literally lunged at the other, fiery head down, and the second bird dropped to a lower branch, where it depressed its crown feathers, once again hiding the red under the yellow, and started to tremble its wings and tail like a fledgling soliciting food: “Honest, sir, I didn’t mean it!”